SEAWINDS_LEVEL_2B_COMP_12_1

PODAAC-SEA12-L2B00

Version 1

AbstractThis dataset contains Level 2B science-quality ocean surface wind vector retrievals from the SeaWinds on ADEOS-II scatterometer. The retrievals are provided on a non-uniform grid within the swath at 12.5 km pixel resolution. Higher resolution is achieved through a slice composite technique in which high resolution slice measurements from L1B data are composited into a 12.5 km wind vector cell. The increased sampling resolution enables users to obtain wind vectors 10 km closer to shore when compared to the 25 km L2B dataset. Each L2B file corresponds to a specific orbital revolution (rev) number, which begins at the southernmost point of the ascending orbit. The granule metadata is consistent with the QuikSCAT L2B dataset, with exception of the amsr_rain_indicator provided by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) instrument aboard the ADEOS-II spacecraft. Also, the wvc_quality_flag utilizes bits 2-6 for AMSR-related data quality assessment; these bits are left empty in the QuikSCAT L2B wvc_quality_flag variable. An ASCII inline quality report (Q2B) has been generated for each L2B file; each Q2B file provides statistics of various quality elements pertaining to the processing of a specific L2B file. This is the official dataset produced by the QuikSCAT Project through the SeaWinds Processing and Analysis Center (SeaPAC).